


there are too many souvenirs in your eyes

by minarchy



Series: celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention [1]
Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon Fix-It, Uncharted 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 05:41:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6841279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minarchy/pseuds/minarchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You,” says Elena, indicating both of them, “are utterly useless. I’m taking our room — you two can use the guest room. Try not to scandalise the neighbours.” And she’s gone, back into the house, the door closing shut behind her.</p><p>“What the hell just happened,” says Sully.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there are too many souvenirs in your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> to be entirely blamed on renne, who fully enabled and encouraged this work of utter indulgence 
> 
> fix it wrt nate and sully's relationship not living up to the u3 standard because apart from that i am So Happy
> 
> this genuinely like 80% porn wtf

     _Accommodate the action of your life,_  
_she seemed to say: make past and future fuse._  
_I felt her fingers dig into my back:_  
_That strength I had is yours. Things die. Not love._  
  
**_— Luke Davies, Heisenberg Saying Goodbye to Mum at Lilyfield_**

 

It's Elena that calls Sam, insists that he and Sully meet them back in the city — she only just found out she's got a brother-in-law, and she deserves a chance to get to know him.

(“Eh,” Sam had said, scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck, “I ain't all that, Elena. You're probably better off. “

“You know I'm married to your brother, right,” she'd said. “I'm well versed in the Drake attempts to avoid a situation. Besides,” she'd said, checking over her shoulder for Nate, who had been browsing the airport bookstore, “I'm worried about him and Sully.”

“Yeah,” Sam had said, gaze flicking to where Sully was flying up front, and lowered his voice, “yeah; was it weird that they just — split up like that? All I ever heard from Nate was how the sun shines out of Sullivan's ass.”

“So?” she'd said, instead of answering him. “You two’ll come?”

“If it's to get my little brother to squirm through a conversation, then I'm always on board.”

Elena had laughed. “I do want to get to know you better,” she'd said. “I _really_ need embarrassing stories about Nate as a kid.”

“In that, I can provide,” Sam had said, grinning. “Hang on a sec; hey, Sullivan! Elena wants you at her house by the time they land or she's gonna skin you for skipping out on her.”

Elena had heard Sully’s grumble of “aw, _hell_ ,” even down the phone line, and she'd grinned.)

Sam heads out soon after dinner and a slew of stories about their lives in the orphanage — most of which Nate had vehemently denied, due to them being embellished to the point of outright fiction — with a kiss on Elena's cheek and something about finally getting his first night as a free man, leaving Sully to make casual suggestions about how several aspects of the lies Sam had regaled them with this evening would explain so much about Nate's personality. 

It’s strange for Nate to see him in the little slice of domesticity that he and Elena had carved out for themselves, like his two worlds colliding in his kitchen, opening his fridge, drinking his beer. Everything he ever wanted from both his lives, one grouching about the lack of good Scotch in his cupboards, the other laughing and flicking blonde hair from her eyes.

“Oh, no,” says Elena, as Sully pulls a cigar from inside his coat and tucks it between his teeth, “you are _not_ smoking inside my house.”

Sully looks sheepishly at the cigar now resting between the knuckles of his fingers. “Guess I’ll be outside, then,” he says, taking his glass of whiskey in one hand and heading towards the back door and the scrub that they call a garden with a rueful look at Nate. He makes a face back, and wipes it clean only a second too late when Elena looks at him.

His wife — and there are still days that he can’t believe that he managed to pull that off, that Elena sees through all the bullshit treasure hunter machismo and somehow finds something there that she wants to spend her life with — isn’t looking at him, leaning one hip against the countertop and looking out the window into the darkness beyond the glass, her beer hanging from her fingers. She looks tired, her skin pale with fatigue and bruises under her eyes. She is so beautiful.

“Hey,” he says, standing on the place where the carpet meets the linoleum. “I, uh,” _am so bad at this_ , “look, Elena—”

“No, hey,” she says, finally looking at him, a brief flick of her eyes over her shoulder, her expression amused, “don’t strain yourself. You already did this part, remember?”

“Not properly,” he says, “I mean, I fucked up. I fucked up big time, just like I always do — and I’m so sorry, Elena. I didn’t tell you about Avery or about Rafe, or any of it, and then I made you come save my ass—”

“ _Again_ ,” says Elena.

“Yeah, again, and — _Jesus_ , I’m sorry I never told you about Sam.” The lies his brother told still sting, but he's standing in front of his wife and he knows he doesn't get to feel that anger right now. Elena is looking at him, shifting her weight so that she’s facing him, blue eyes watching him assessingly. “I’m so— honestly, Elena, I—”

“Okay,” she says. Nate stops, thrown, the rest of — whatever he was going to say drying up in his mouth.

“Uh,” he says, “okay? Just like that?”

“Oh no,” says Elena, raising an eyebrow and something like a smile playing at the corners of her mouth, “not ‘just like that’; but okay. I accept your apology. Again. Wow, that’s two in as many days — gotta be some kind of record for you, huh.”

“Yeah?” he says, ignoring the jibe because, yeah, that's fair, feeling his face fall into relief, his mouth spreading slack into a grin. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she says, stepping forward to cup her hand against his cheek, fingers cool and wet from the condensation beading on the bottle neck. “Really.” And she kisses him, a brief press of lips against his. “Your apologies could use some work, though,” she adds, smirking at him, “and don’t think you’re off the hook for all the shit you pulled.”

“Gonna be paying for that for a while, huh?”

“You’re going to be cleaning my car for the rest of your life.”

“I should be so lucky,” he says, his voice soft and honest. Elena smiles up at him, her gaze amused, and pleased.

“I’m not the only one you should be apologising to,” she says.

“Ugh,” he says, “now I gotta make it two in one night?”

“Yes,” she says, poking him hard in the chest, her finger sharp against his sternum. “ _Two in one night_. Asshole.”

“Okay!” he says, raising his hands in surrender. “Okay, I’m going.”

 

Sully is in the garden, the glow from his cigar casting an orange smear into the relative darkness of the inner suburbs. The night air is cool on Nate’s face as he steps out onto the paving, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Hey, kid,” says Sully. “You and Elena talk about all that stuff you said you had to?”

“Yeah.” Nate scrubs a hand up through the short hair on the back of his head. “Turns out commercial flights aren't as comfortable — or as private — as I thought, though.” Sully snorts. “But yeah, I think we're okay. We got everything sorted out, as much as things can be sorted right now.”

Sully laughs, low in his throat. “She tear you a new one, huh.”

“Gonna be cleaning the house on my knees for the foreseeable future.” He huffs out a breath, watching it plume in front of him in the wan light drifting through the door at his back. “She’s not the only one I gotta apologise to, though.”

“You writing a letter to the National Trust for blowing up that monastery?”

“Ha ha,” says Nate, drily. “You know that wasn’t what I was talking about.”

“Aw, hell, kid,” says Sully, shifting his weight, clearly uncomfortable. This isn’t something that they do, and Nate feels abruptly guilty about that. “We don’t gotta go through all that.”

“Yeah,” says Nate, watching the way the orange light catches deep in the creases of Sully’s face and twists into his hair, still stubbornly clinging to silver after all these years. “Yeah, I really think we do.”

“Jeez, Nate.” Sully drops the butt of his cigar onto the paving and crushes it with the flat of his shoe. “Look, I’ve known you for basically your whole life; you don’t need to say anything to me.”

“I’m sorry,” says Nate, the words falling easier from his tongue now that it’s the second time, like practise has made the expression of guilt and remorse a simpler thing, “honest, Sully; I’m sorry for all the shit that I put you through, I’m sorry for sending you away—”

“Hey,” says Sully, “I was pushing you long before this whole thing with Sam started.”

“Wait,” says Nate, changing track halfway through vocalising his next thought, “wait, what? When were you—” and he catches the look on Sully’s face now that he’s turned to face him, the pale light throwing the slant of his eyes and the turn of his mouth into sharp relief against the night black of the garden behind him. “You didn’t want to see me?” Nate says, and his voice sounds very small, and he hates himself for it.

“No,” says Sully, taking a half step towards Nate and then stopping himself, like he doesn’t want to get so close. It’s all Nate can do to stop himself flinching away, because this is _Sully_ , Sully who has given him everything since he was fourteen and a street kid in Cartagena with dreams of Francis Drake and his lost fortune, Sully who Nate had loved, fiercely and easily, who Nate still loves, despite the distance that had opened up between them like an ocean.

“No,” says Sully, “don’t think— of course I wanted to see you, Nate. But you got married, and I got old, and, you know. It’s like they say: life gets in the way.”

“Oh, please,” says Elena, making both of them jump; Nate hadn’t heard her come outside, but there she is, standing backlit in the doorway, arms folded and leaning against the doorframe, her expression amused and unimpressed in equal terms. “The only thing in your way is each other.”

“Did you know?” says Nate. “Did you know he didn’t want—”

“What, you think Victor Sullivan suddenly became the most popular guy on campus overnight?” says Elena, giving him her best flat look.

“Hey!” says Sully. “I’m extremely popular.”

“Not _that_ popular,” says Elena. “‘Oh, sorry, I got a job’, ‘yeah, I would come for Thanksgiving, but I’m in Singapore on a job’, ‘sorry I couldn’t make it for Christmas, I was on a job’. For a professional thief, you really suck at lying.”

“So,” says Nate, “you _didn’t_ want to see me.”

“ _Or_ ,” says Elena, pointedly, “he didn’t want you seeing _him_.”

“What?”

“I’m old, Nate,” says Sully, at Elena’s look so sharp Nate’s surprised he isn’t bleeding. “You don’t need that in your life.”

“ _What_?”

“You,” says Elena, indicating both of them, “are utterly useless. I’m taking our room — you two can use the guest room. Try not to scandalise the neighbours.” And she’s gone, back into the house, the door closing shut behind her.

“What the hell just happened,” says Sully.

“You think I don’t want you because you’re _old_?” says Nate, ignoring him. He’s almost furious with incredulity. “Sully, you’ve _always_ been old.”

“Aw, shucks, kid, you’re making me blush.”

“You know what I mean,” says Nate, irritated, closing the distance between them in two quick strides. He can smell the whiskey and cigar smoke on Sully’s breath. “You’re always that asshole who saved my life in Cartagena. I don’t care about—” he waves his hands, trying to encapsulate time and the irrelevance of the physical changes it brings with it, “shit, Sully, _I’m_ old, if we’re talking from when we started this.”

“As I recall,” says Sully, “you ‘started’ it.”

Nate’s face splits into a grin, remembering. “I climbed you like a tree,” he says.

“You fell into my lap and stuck your tongue down my throat,” says Sully, “after years of harassment, if I recall correctly.”

“I knew what I wanted,” says Nate, shrugging. “I still do.” His gaze is heated, now, but wary, watching Sully’s face, expecting the rejection that still tastes sour at the back of his mouth.

“Yeah?” says Sully. “If you say ‘you’, I’m gonna have to punch you, fair warning.”

Nate laughs, steps closer again. “Goddamn it, Sully,” he says, “you stole my line.”

“You know me,” says Sully, humour in the quirk of his mouth that Nate follows with his eyes, “once a thief, always a thief.”

“Sully,” says Nate, his voice low, hands coming up to wind fingers in the front of Sully’s jacket as he follows the line of his eyes with his mouth. The kiss is chaste, close-mouthed, and Nate revels in it, the slot of their mouths together so familiar, the wiry brush of Sully’s moustache against his face, the curve of Sully’s lower lip against his own as he presses against it — but there is no answering press of movement, and Nate drops the kiss but doesn’t move away. His fingers clench fists into Sully’s jacket, their foreheads touching against the line of their brow. 

“Come on,” he says, “come on, Sully;” his tone desperate now, his eyes still closed and screwed tight against the expression he knows Sully is wearing.

Big hands come up from Sully’s side and wrap around his bare wrists, skin rough against the rapid thrum of his pulse. “Nate,” says Sully, his voice gentle, and Nate is thrown backwards in time to when he was young and urgent and horribly in love with this man who wouldn’t return his affection with anything other than kindness. He feels again the sick throb in the pit of his stomach, the sting at the back of his throat; but he is older now, and he knows Sully, and he isn’t going to let him get away with pretending that everything between them is something easily thrown aside.

He pushes Sully away, suddenly, shaking him and surprising Sully off-balance; on the return pull, he kisses Sully again, harder this time, hungrier — he can taste the desperation high in his throat as he presses teeth and lips against Sully’s mouth, furious at Sully for creating this false distance between them, furious at himself for allowing the lies that separated them for two years to continue and evolve into something that has made Sully doubt and _discard_ their shared history as a thing that is better left to die. He kisses Sully, almost biting at his mouth, until he feels Sully respond, feels his grip on Nate’s wrists slacken as he moves into the kiss, allowing Nate to open their mouths and slide his tongue in to twist against Sully’s, and invitation and a demand for acknowledgement that Sully seems helpless to deny; he shifts his own weight, tilts his head and seals their lips together, moving slick now in the damp press of their mouths. 

The wet sounds of their kissing sends a thrill deep into the coil of his gut, where the nausea had been churning only moments again, counterpoint to the lightning spark up his spine as Sully releases his wrists to slide his hands around the curve of Nate’s ribs and settle, fingertips a firm and insistent pressure, at the small of his back. Nate is gasping every time their lips part; he can hear himself panting into the relative quiet of the night around them, harsh and wanton as he shifts his grip from either side of Sully’s collarbone to further down his shirt, knuckles pressing against the lower curve of Sully’s pectorals, pulling him in closer and feeling Sully’s hands tighten in return.

“Don’t,” he says, in between kisses, “don’t leave. Come inside. Come inside with me,” and Sully’s fingers spasm against his back, catching on the pressure point and jolting Nate’s hips forward into Sully’s, where he can feel the hot length of him swelling against his trousers.

“Fuck, kid,” says Sully, his voice deep and kiss-rough.

“Please,” says Nate, kissing him again, falling easily back into the old tactics he’d had to use, back when this thing had been so new that Sully had been reluctant to follow through on the promises made silent between their lips. He pulls back, light-headed and panting, seeing himself reflected in Sully’s eyes: his own blown out wide and his mouth red and swollen, breath curling out between them in short gasps of condensation. He looks debauched. He sees the moment that Sully breaks.

“Goddamn it, kid,” says Sully, tugging him back to press at his mouth again, to suck on his tongue. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

“Not yet,” says Nate, moving backwards towards the door and feeling Sully’s grip on him slacken and slide away; he catches at Sully’s wrist, turns their palms together, and leads him inside.

In the light of the utility room Sully falters, and Nate turns back to him, not letting go. He wants Sully to _see_ , to see how much Nate wants him like a physical ache in his chest; and not just in his bed, but in his house, at his table and on his sofa, curled up with him and Elena and mocking the television, like they used to. He wants Sully in his life, he wants him to stay and to _want_ to stay, not trapped in with them but willing to come back, the lodestone of Nate’s existence since the rooftop where Sully had killed for him, all those long years ago.

“Come on, Sully,” he says again. “Don’t go chickening out on me, now.”

“Who’re you calling chicken,” Sully growls, and they’re on the stairs now, Sully crowding him against the banister, biting at the line of his jaw. Nate curses and shoves Sully away, grabbing at him and hauling him up onto the landing, twisting and kissing Sully, stumbling backwards past the closed door of the room that he and Elena share and through into the spare bedroom, Sully walking him backwards with his mouth an insistent force against Nate’s until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the mattress and he loses balance. He tumbles backwards onto the bed, dragging Sully down on top of him in an ungainly sprawl, the weight of him pressing Nate’s hips and back and shoulders down into the covers, solid and reassuring and almost unbearably arousing after more than two years without it.

Nate hears the moan rumble up through his chest and Sully swallow it down as he pushes strong fingers against Nate’s scalp and tilts his head back, baring his neck for Sully to drag his teeth down; Nate writhes under the attention, his hips undulating against Sully’s and now it’s Sully turn to curse and thrust down against him in a roll that sends sparks blooming under Nate’s half-lidded eyes, biting down on the curve of Nate’s windpipe pressing up through the skin of his throat.

“Sully,” he says, his voice wrecked and God, they’re both still fully dressed; “Sully, fuck, you gotta fuck me, come on.” Sully makes a sound that is a moan and a snarl grinding out between his teeth, and Nate feels himself clench at the idea of Sully inside him, desperate for it. “ _God_ , you gotta, you’ve got to fuck me, I want to feel you, come on.”

“The _mouth_ on you,” Sully growls, voice hot near Nate’s ear, and he shudders and moans at the promise of it.

“Gonna shut me up?” he says, catching Sully’s eye and grinning at him, his facial muscles slack with lust as his fingers push under Sully’s shirt, drag blunt nails down the flat of his stomach.

“Maybe later,” says Sully, and Nate’s vision blacks out, briefly, his hips stuttering up into Sully’s and his mouth filling with saliva at the sense memory of Sully’s cock, hot and hard on his tongue. “I’ll fucking come from the sight of you if we do that now, and you’ve been asking so nicely.”

“Manners,” says Nate, his mind thick and slow from the sparks of mixed arousal and pain shooting through him as the zipper of his jeans presses against his cock. “I got ‘em.”

“Still got a few surprises left in you, huh,” says Sully, and Nate smirks at him.

“Been a while, old man. Maybe I learned some new moves.”

“Oh yeah?” says Sully, sitting up across Nate’s hips and shrugging off his jacket, unbuttoning his shirt down his sternum and tugging it over his head. The line of his erection bulges in the front of his trousers and Nate’s eyes are drawn to it, irresistibly. “You do this with Elena?”

Nate’s henley has rucked up past the start of his ribcage and he feels himself flush down his chest, sees the moment that Sully catches sight of it because his face twists into something predatory and amused. 

“You did,” he breathes, bending back down over Nate and pushing the henley higher still, his thumbs dragging over the hard points of Nate’s nipples. “She step into a strap-on and stretch you open, fuck you with it until you _begged_?” His voice drops a full octave on the last word, his thumbs rubbing maddening circles on the pebbled gooseflesh of his areolas. 

“Yeah,” Nate admits, his hips grinding up into Sully’s in almost unconscious movement, lust stabbing like a hot blade through his brain and stumbling him into honesty. “Yeah, Sully, but I don’t— I want—” 

He feels nineteen again, young and lost and desperate under Sully’s maddening care, the first time Sully took him to bed rather than Nate initiating, turning Nate into a shivering, helpless mess under his mouth and his hands. 

“Easy,” says Sully, his voice low and soft, his hands sweeping up Nate’s ribs like calming a nervous horse, catching his henley and lifting it up over Nate’s shoulders. “Easy, kid. I know. I’ve got you.”

Nate, somewhere in a distant part of his mind, knows that he should feel embarrassed by this, being the wrong side of thirty five and needing Sully to soothe him before he quakes out of his skin; but he doesn’t, because this is Sully, and he trusts Sully not to shame him the same way that he trusts Elena. He doesn’t have to pretend, here.

He reaches out, and drags the flat pads of his fingers through the coarse grey hair on Sully’s chest, across the age spots and the scars and the sagging skin, feeling the firm press of muscle fading only slightly to age. Sully is undoing his belt, moving off Nate to sit beside him and kick off his boots and shove off his trousers; Nate pops the button on his own jeans and bites his lip at the pressure of his hand as he slides the zipper down, pushing both them and his boxers quickly over his hips and off onto the floor, toeing off his socks in the same movement. He turns to Sully and sets his teeth into the curve of his clavicle.

“How can you think,” he says, “that I won’t want you.” He moves closer into Sully, his cock sliding wet up Sully’s thigh. “Jesus, Sully,” and he drags his nose up over Sully’s jaw, tangling his fingers in Sully’s chest hair.

“Yeah,” says Sully, kissing him. “Have you got,” and Nate gropes behind him for the bedside cabinet, tugging open the drawer and fumbling inside for the bottle of non-descript lubricant that Nate had bought at CVS when they’d decorated this room. “You keep slick in your guest bedroom?” says Sully, incredulous.

“We don’t get a lot of guests,” Nate says. “It was gonna be your room, for when you wanted it.”

Sully goes very still. Nate can feel his heartbeat through his chest wall, fast and almost febrile under his palm; and then Sully flicks open the cap of the lubricant and squeezes a generous amount onto Nate’s stomach. Nate yelps and flinches at the shock of cold liquid pooling across his stomach, and then clenches his jaw and hisses at the sudden movement makes his cock slap against his abdomen and jerk arousal that he can feel in his teeth.

“Asshole,” he gasps, and Sully chuckles, dragging his fingers through the mess on Nate’s stomach. His hole flutters in anticipation at the look on Sully’s face, iris a thin ring of blue around lust-blown pupils.

Sully hums, a non-committable noise at odds with his expression, predatory and _smug_ as he brushes his hand against the hot skin on Nate’s cock, the barely-there touches fleeting and too many to be accidental; Nate squirms, chasing Sully’s hand and reaching up one of his own to wrap about the base of Sully’s skull, tugging him down to kiss. Sully goes willingly, curling his spine so that Nate isn’t allowed more than one thrust against the plane of Sully’s stomach, his hips snapping up off the bed when his cock head, fat and leaking, smears precome over the trail of hair winding down Sully’s stomach towards his own cock, arching out proud and flushed into the space between them.

The point of an elbow slides under Nate’s knee, lifting his leg up and over Sully’s shoulder as he curls his tongue against Nate’s and reaches down to brush his wet hand in a firm slide from Nate’s balls, along his taint and up over his hole. His fingers, the tips callused and work-roughened, brush over the rim and smooth around it slow, inconsistent circles, Nate swearing and groaning and taking his hands off Sully to brace them against the coverlet, trying to gain enough leverage to fuck himself down on them.

“Come on,” he says. His skin is singing, the edges of it blurring in Nate’s perception as he feels his eyes rolling back into his head as Sully’s fingers dip playfully inside him, catching the inside of his rim on the outwards pull, and he _keens_. “Come on, Sully,” he says, the words gasping out of him, “don’t— don’t fuck around.” His voice cracks slightly, which finally seems to get Sully’s attention, because he stops toying with him and thrusts his finger in all the way to the knuckle in one smooth slide. Nate is panting, trying to get his breathing under control, his fingers twisting in the sheets as he fucks himself on Sully’s finger.

“Easy, kid,” Sully is saying, smoothing his hand along Nate’s flank, a rhythm counterpoint to the press of his finger inside him. “Take it easy.”

“Gimme another,” says Nate, greedy for it.

“Yeah?” says Sully, his second finger a blunt pressure against Nate’s hole that has him grunting low in his chest. “You’re pretty eager, kid.”

“You’re taking your sweet time, old man,” Nate says. “What, you afraid to get to the main event?”

“Life’s not all about the big scores, Nate,” Sully says, scissoring his fingers and smirking at the way Nate’s teeth sink into his lower lip. “I’m enjoying myself, here.”

“Could be, ah, enjoying yourself a lot more.” Nate drops his other knee down against the bed, spreading himself wider. 

“Patience is a virtue,” says Sully. “You want another?”

“The hell do you know about virtue,” says Nate, hitching his hips; “yeah — nnngh, yeah, one more, come on,” and then he whines as Sully crooks his fingers and rubs the flat of them hard on his prostate, his hips jerking and his cock leaking a fat glob of precome.

“Probably best not to sass the guy with his fingers up your ass,” Sully says, his voice a low breath in Nate’s ear, heavy with threat and promise. Nate laughs, and then slams his fist down into the bed as Sully flexes his fingers again, a sharp push and slow drag down his prostate that has his back bowing up off the bed as he pushes up, seeking friction.

“If this,” he says, gasping as Sully milks him ruthlessly, “if this is your idea of punishment, it’s, ah, it’s no wonder I don’t, I don’t listen to you.”

“Having problems with your thought processes, there, Nate?” Sully says, three fingers deep inside him with the pad of his thumb brushing against Nate’s perineum.

“I— ah, fuck, enough, come on Sully,” Nate says, what he was about to say lost in the tightening of his balls and he kicks at Sully’s arm, pushing his hand out of him, “I don’t want to come before you get inside me, come _on_.”

Cursing, Sully bites down on the thin skin in the crease of Nate’s knee, his wet hand digging bruises into the meat of Nate’s thigh as Nate scrabbles around in the drawer and grabs at the foil packet, his own fingers greasy with sweat; he wants to feel Sully inside him, wants the bare heat of their skin on skin, but they have their rule about getting tested when they come back off a job before they get to play sloppy, and Nate isn’t waiting for a doctor’s appointment. Sully tears the packet open with his teeth, a faint tremor in the line of his wrist, and Nate watches him, gaze heavy on the lines of him: the flush of arousal on his chest, the sharp points of his nipples sticking out from the silver curls of chest hair, the thick jut of his cock between his legs.

Sully catches his gaze as he rolls the condom onto himself, and Nate’s tongue darts out to wet his lips. 

“You ready?” he says, resting his weight on his knees behind Nate’s hips, his cock a thick promise against his ass.

“Yeah,” Nate says, grasping at him, “yeah, I’m waiting, I want it, so much better than the peg, Sully.”

“Ha,” says Sully, leaning down over Nate, bracing himself on his forearms on either side of Nate’s shoulders, bracketing him in as he pushes inside. “I’ll be sure to tell Elena.”

“Elena— Elena makes it good in other ways,” says Nate, his breath stuttering out of him at the blunt press of Sully inside him.

“But nothing lives up to the real thing, huh.” Sully’s smirking; Nate can feel it against his cheek. He bites his lip, groan trapped in his chest as Sully bottoms out, the wiry brush of his pubic hair against his rim sending sparks up his spine.

“You talk a good game,” says Nate, hooking his ankles below Sully’s shoulder blades and shuddering as the angle shifts, “but I don’t see you doing anything.”

“Hey, I’m just getting comfy here,” says Sully, “these old bones don’t take too well to ill treatment.” He shifts, a minute weight redistribution, and suddenly Nate isn’t in the mood for banter any more.

“Jesus, Sully, stop fucking around, I’m already close, you just, you gotta, come on.” The rest of his babble is punched out of him when Sully pulls out and slams back into him with a sharp snap of his hips, the words tumbling together into a single sound as Sully moves again. The sheets burn against his back and shoulders as he is forced up the bed, has to brace one hand against the headboard as the other scrabbles at Sully’s shoulders, sounds gasping out of him on every instroke.

He knows he’s being loud, hears them get louder when the creaking of the bed slats turns into the headboard slamming into the wall when he manages to find the leverage to move with Sully, meeting every thrust with an upward push of his hips; the heavy slap of Sully’s balls against his ass and the rumbling groans that he’s pressing into Nate’s neck, the join of his ear.

“Fuck,” he’s saying, “fuck, Sully,” biting at his own lips, his throat clicking dry as he swallows air. His cock is trapped between them, rubbing against their stomachs in a slick slide as the lubricant Sully had spilt on him smears across them both, intermingling with their sweat. Sully _snarls_ , and grabs at Nate’s hips, tugging him deeper into Sully’s lap and practically bending him in half. The angle has him pressing hard against Nate’s prostate with every movement; Nate feels his skin buzzing, his fingers no longer aware of the skin of Sully’s back or the hard wood of the headboard as all sensation narrows down to the point where they are moving in tandem.

He feels like he’s going to shake apart at the seams, hears himself making harsh, unconscious sounds, knows that Elena can hear them from the other side of the house, wonders if she’s lying in bed now with her hand in her pajamas, listening to them, and he can’t believe he is allowed to have both of them, and he’s going to keep them, this time; this time he’s going to do better, he’s going to make it work, he can learn from his mistakes.

“Don’t,” he says, because he’s got to tell Sully, before the heat coiling in his gut bursts out over him and anything he says will be discounted as post-coital nothings, “don’t let me send you away again, Sully, don’t let me,” and he’s gasping, his orgasm rushing down on him like a train screaming through a tunnel. “Promise,” he says, rambling now, his thoughts scattered, “please, you gotta—”

“I promise, Nate,” says Sully, his voice vibrating across Nate’s skin, “it’s okay, come on now—”

and Nate comes so hard his ears ring, his entire body clenching as he adds to the mess between their bodies; he feels Sully swear and bite down on his collarbone as he tightens around him.

“Fuck, _Nate_ —”

“Yeah,” says Nate, giddy with orgasm, “yeah, come on, Sully, do it,” and Sully curses again, his fingers leaving bruises as his teeth drag blood to bloom under his skin, thrusting raggedly into him before stilling, abruptly, his weight sagging down.

Sully pulls out carefully, mindful of Nate’s wince, ties off the condom and flicks it into the wastepaper basket by the tips of his fingers, the way that people do with cigarette butts. Nate watches him, eyes lazy with orgasm and fatigue, as he sprawls back on the bed.

“Look at this mess you’ve made,” Sully says, eyeballing the mixture of lubricant and semen smeared across them both.

“You started it.”

“You’re the youngster — you get to go get a washcloth.”

“Nuh-uh,” says Nate, rolling over onto his side and smirking at Sully, his face half hidden in the pillow. “I’m not walking anywhere.”

Sully looks at him, quirking an eyebrow. “Are you saying that I fucked you so hard you can’t move?”

“Mmm,” he says, rubbing his face deeper into the pillow and grinning at him, “maybe. Think your ego can handle it?”

“Oh, please,” says Sully, “my ego can handle anything you throw at it; and that’s a nice thought, but you’re a fucking liar.” He shoves at Nate with his foot. “Go get the cloth. I ain’t dealing with dried come in the shower tomorrow.”

Nate laughs, and rolls over with exaggerated begrudgement; he doesn’t move off the bed, though, instead snagging Sully’s shirt from the floor and wiping them both down.

“Hey!” says Sully. “You little shit.”

“It was a fuck ugly shirt,” says Nate, tossing it away. “No great loss.”

 

Nate wakes up to light drifting through their thin curtains; it’s grey and pink-stained, a watercolour sunrise, just before dawn, and Sully is still there, breathing heavy in his sleep on the other side of the bed. Nate rolls towards him, rests his head on the wings of Sully’s ribcage where the hairline starts to fade into skin. He considers waking Sully with his mouth on his cock, imagines the weight of it in his mouth as it swells, how Sully would wake sleep-confused and helpless against him, his fingers tangling in Nate’s hair. 

He falls asleep to the ocean rush of Sully’s heartbeat in his ear.

 

He wakes again to the soft movements of Sully’s thumb rubbing circles at the base of his skull, his hand a comfort weight on the back of his neck. His head is still on Sully’s stomach, his nose pressed into the dip at the base of his sternum, and he has an arm slung over Sully’s hips. Sully can clearly tell that Nate has woken, possibly from the flutter of his eyelashes against his skin, because he says,

“this takes me back,” in a low, soft voice. It isn’t rough with sleep, so he’s probably been awake for some time, letting Nate sleep on, letting Nate lie on him. He feels something flare open in his chest and doesn’t want to examine it too carefully, because Sully has made no promises and Nate hasn’t actually asked him anything, and there is still those two years of open silence between them. Instead, he rubs his nose into Sully’s stomach, childlike and deliberately annoying, feeling Sully’s laughter ripple through him.

“Can I smell pancakes?” he says.

“Yeah,” says Sully. “Your wife’s been busy; I’m surprised it took you so long to wake up, once she started cooking.”

Nate grumbles good-naturedly, rolling off Sully and luxuriating in the burn in his ass and lower back as he stretches, the sting of the bruises Sully left for him. “She knows just how to get me up,” he grouches.

“You’ve been spoiled,” says Sully, “all it used to take for me was coffee in the next room.”

“And a wet towel on my face,” says Nate, shooting him a look over his shoulder. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”

“You were a terror to get out of bed when you were a teenager,” Sully says. “You’re lucky I didn’t use any of the other tricks the Navy used to use.”

Nate shudders theatrically. “God forbid,” he says, grinning.

 

When they shuffle into the kitchen a few minutes later, Nate playing up his limp slightly more than necessary, Sully clipping him on the back of the ear, Elena has a giant stack of pancakes on a plate in the middle of the table.

“Morning, sleeping beauty,” she says, smirking at Nate and kissing him. “Nice to see you finally back with us.”

“It’s not that late,” Nate says, propping his head on his chin and gratefully accepting the coffee that Elena passes him. She hands one to Sully as well, kissing his cheek as she does in casual morning greeting, just like they used to. Nate tangles their ankles together under the table, eyeing the pancakes waiting for him.

“You sticking around for a while, Sully?” says Elena, casually, as she flips the last of the pancakes.

“Uh,” says Sully, “well, I got that job to finish, and I’ve gotta teach Sam the ropes before he does something else spectacularly stupid.”

“Funny you should mention Sam,” says Elena, in that voice she uses when she’s scheming, and her plan is falling neatly into place. In his head, Nate can see her with one of Sully’s cigars between her teeth, grinning brightly at the camera in an 80s tv serial. “He texted me this morning, saying he’s taking a week of liberty on account of him just getting out of prison after fifteen years, and his useless brother not taking the time to get him laid.”

She stacks the last of the pancakes, collects the syrup from the cupboard and takes her own seat at the table, opposite Sully and next to Nate. 

“So,” she says, placing her cold feet on top of Nate’s, her toes brushing against Sully's bare ankles, “unless there’s somewhere else you’ve got to be?”

Sully looks between them for a long moment, leaning back in his chair. “Now you mention it,” he says, “I don’t think there is.”

 


End file.
